I'm a Windows usin' Linux retard.

I'm getting the hang of it. This is what I've learned.

1. ubuntuforums.com. Get registered and be amazed by the incredibly helpful community. It's kinda bizarre. Anything you'v'e wanted to do is usually covered there.

2. If you're confident, check out "poofy hair guys guide to eyecandy" It's a simple copy/paste job that will give you cool effects like compositing, window accelleration, desktop ripple effects, desklets, etc.

3) If not, gnomelook.org has all of the themes you would possibly ever want to try (even though "our" best themer is lyrae who you are featuring here). Alot of the themes are similar in design except for color changes.

4) If there is something you want to do? Ubuntu always has a way of doing it. I just started poking around in the theme gtkrc files, and playing around with the values. linux is very customisable.

5) the only drawback is that our media players kinda suck. being limited to only classic skins definitely bugs. there are ways of running winamp 3...

6) Have fun. Being open source is a psychological change, you'll start out small, but after a month or so you'll be bragging how you can install a theme by a simple command line.

7) there are so many random programs that are just a click away. imagine having windows put out software that counts nucleo-peptides available to anyone to download for free. creepy. but cool. try the mathematic programs just for seeing the uber-geeky voyeurism. just go to synaptic in your systems menu, then type in whatever software you've ever wanted to try in the search prompt. Click to apply, then wait as your computer does all the heavy lifting.

ok, i'm tired now...

Your windows files are probably partitioned in a NTFS format. Linux can read, but doesn't like to write to NTFS that well, so, while you'll be able to use your files, you won't be able to modify them.

How are you connected to the internet?

And, ubuntuforums was essential for me when I first started. I highly suggest you browse around there for a bit :)

You should try and connect using the NAT setting.

Are you using wired or wireless networking, the latter can be trickier.
If you are using wired, open your terminal, and type:
ifconfig eth0
if you are using wireless, open your terminal, and type:
ifconfig wlan0
Post your results to here or UbuntuForums, and I am sure you could get some help if have tried some of the troubleshooting threads there to no avail.

I'm back on windows to use the internet, but I shall try that stuff and see how it works, and post back here, thank you all.

you can run winamp three skins via teh kofojol plugin for xmms

besides......music players are not for looking at....well only when you gotta load a new playlist...

thus...winamp 2.91 does exceptionally well with the skins created by the breedart crew.

I'm kind of a linux noob myself, but I don't think the customization is as easy and expansive as you hope it is...unless you like to code alot...

Ubuntu might be user-friendly, but I still find it kind of bloated...I run Arch linux and if you really feel like LEArning Linux, then its a good distro...if its just a quick trip then ubuntu will probably be swell, I hear their forums are awesome.

How big is ArchLinux dude?

What do you mean, big? As in popularity or like...installation size?

I would say its pretty popular, but nowhere near ubuntu. Ubuntu is probably like 70% of the Linux world...

Hey Pyro!

why don't give a chance to the gutsy beta?
take a look to his features

NTFS writing for example...

i saw somebody said we dont have many options for media players, linux has loads to offer

there was another site with more but i cnt find it :S

I'd argue that if it weren't for foobar, GNU/Linux would easily have the best media players.

yeah foobar it's the only thing i miss in linux(well that and the awesome VSs that nobody ports to GTK). Personally i like banshee music player.

Yeah theres some beautiful stuff out there for windows, but nothing you cant replicate with linux. I'm just getting into linux, i havent even been using it for a month yet, but its easy to recognize your possibilities, as opposed to windows, which seems to do everything it can to get in your way.

and I'd say get beryl as a window manager, i believe its compiz fusion. nice gui to work with customizing, and you can make a lot of it yourself.

as far as everything else, yeah im afraid its still all code. but it just takes time. although KDE has a nice color interface if you dont feel like learning. I'm using it so i can survive the transition.

and as for it feeling bloated, theres tons of different session types to pick and choose. the most minimalist [although I'd say among the hardest to use] are the "boxes" if you will. theres blackbox, openbox, and fluxbox being the main ones. I'd check out fluxbox if i were you, and read a lot of documentation before you log into it.

hope that little rant helps some.

For the first times, ubuntu is a good choice for starting linux or fedora may be. Arch is a little bit needs professional. And if you're not using ethernet, you need to get drivers to install. I prefer you must use ethernet.

If your modem is wireless (if you're using laptop) probably ubuntu otomatically install the modems drivers may be a problem happened. Customize is better than windows, every window managers flexy. KDE is bulky i think. But good apps has got. XFCE and fluxbox or openbox must your choice for window manager. May be gnome.

I'd second the Arch Linux motion. It's difficult to learn all of the stuff immediately, but the wiki and forums have just about everything you could want to do.

And I really like the idea of not having to tie yourself to a particular window manager (Ubuntu, for instance, uses Gnome by default and there may be problems if you choose another.)

Yea if you're using Linux you must (my idea) install all window managers. And try all of them.

And the most minimalistic sessions aren't actually the *boxes, but rather the Ions / Ratpoison / AwesomeWM / dwm 's out there. They are minimalistic to a fault, in my opinion. (That fault, you ask? They look like crap no matter what you do to them.)

yeah exactly, i didnt even feel like giving them a mention. the boxes are definately minimalist, but still customizable and, like synorgy said, still able to look nice.

and yes, I'd agree that KDE is extremely bulky, but at the same time easy on beginners. i think the same with Gnome, but the difference comes in KDE's control center automating every single thing so easily. that alone makes it a great tool for beginners. that and you can still use beryl inside of KDE, allowing for it to look nice.

and going way back to the media players, and the awesome unported VS...

yeah. media players are awesome. i use banshee as well, i just cant wait to get an EQ without having to run jack and all sorts of other shit.

and as far as unported VS, just message me, ill do my best to work on different styles and such. all i need is the requests and the time. i just wont do anything i think sucks is the deal.

Well thanks for all the replies, I had all but forgotten about this post until someone mentioned it to me.

I currently in the process of getting back into my desktop and off my mother's vista laptop. So I'll a lot more freedom to explore the Linux world.

However first and foremost I'd like to get back situated into running XP, then when I'm more comfortable with installing a distro I'll try it out.

The live/bootable CD thing just isn't gonna work if I can't write to the HD, or read the windows one, or if it can't even connect to the internet.

Currently I'm even having internet problems with my windows pc, getting kicked off and such. But hopefully I'll get those fixed soon and start to get everything sorted out. :)

i could connect to the internet, and if you want you could write some files to an external drive. thats what i had done for a while until i actually installed it. also if your external [or internal partition] is formatted fat32 both linux and windows could read from it.

well writing on ntfs-partitions is no more a problem since one year or longer! (ntfs-3g, ubuntu has it activated outofthebox)
or, the other way, you can install drivers on windows to get read/write access to ext3 or something.

I knew about the FAT32 thing, but alas have it on a NTFS partition. Nor do I have an external drive currently.

But, if it can be done to write on NTFS I may have to kick myself into trying it out.

hmm, well I'd say the easiest way is setting up a thunb drive to fat32, or getting ubuntu gutsy [assuming thats the new one, im on feisty]. but the thunm drive is good if you want to keep 2 independent internal drives or something.

and thanks lukeen for giving the app, im going to have to check it out.

There is no problem writing on NTFS in Ubuntu, as long as the aforementioned ntfs-3g is installed. The only problem I have ever had with it is if I didn't properly shut-down Windows (i.e. turning it off as it was shutting down). Then all that had to be done was to force mount it. All really easy stuff just make sure to search the Ubuntu forums when in doubt.

On a related side note, you can use Ext2 IFS for Windows (at fs-driver.org) to read/write your Ubuntu partition from Windows.

have you got rid of windows yet....i should mention that if your using feisty or gutsy....

sudo apt-get install wine winedoors

will get you some love...

before you run windows apps from your ntfs drive or start installing new ones....be sure to run :

winecfg

and autodetect your drives. then apply it.


3d games and programs wont work if your running beryl, compiz, or are using at/nvidia's bigdesktop.

My first Linux distro was Arch.
I spent tons of time making it run nicely.
The wireless config for my laptop was painful. I remember I was solving it for like 4-5 days since the online support wasn't much available.

But I enjoy doing it the 'hard' way. Since it sticks in your head, and you actually learn how stuff work.
I mean you can run some distro where rarely you need to type anything in the console. And after months of having it, you realize that you don't actually know much about it anyways, just 'slackin' off. You learn when problems pop-out :D

And btw, I mean Ubuntu is big, but not 70% afaik. SUSE is huge with german population. Debian is up there as well.
3ht now. Testing! 123

I just up and decided to get a different distro the other day. I got BLAG linux, it's an interesting distribution, and I'm having the problem with my wireless card, but I'll get it sooner or later. and It's working splendidly aside from that.

I can still use LAN, so i can use either of the package management systems [yum and apt].

Youre able to use mp3's and play dvds right after install, no pain there.

If youre into politics, theyre very into it over there. hell on their homepage they have an excellent essay/speech [im not sure which] about the implications of using closed source software and hardware.

and moving on to the forums. absolutely astounding. I mean, conidering the amount of users at the moment, its amazing. on the level of ubuntuforums when comparing helpfulness. I mean, in what other distro does the head developer answer numerous posts every single day?

Its based largely off of fedora and redhat, and some of their own homebrew stuff.

overall, I'd advise trying it out. a very solid distro. but if you must have it live, theyre lacking in that area at the moment. the only downside ive found.

If you want to play around with Ubuntu, but still want to run your XP, you can just install ubuntu as a dualboot.